Stars Without Number: Revised Edition (Free Version)

The Jump Gates fell six hundred years ago, severing the links between the myriad worlds of the human diaspora.

Now, the long isolation of the Silence falls away as men and women return to the skies above their scattered worlds.

Will you be among them once more?

Stars Without Number: Revised Edition is an old-school-inspired game of sci-fi adventure, one built from the ground up to encourage sandbox play and simplify a GM's job in providing it. Familiar mechanics are employed to forge new worlds and explore new possibilities, guidelines built on long experience used to help a group venture in wholly new directions. Within the full-color pages of Stars Without Number: Revised Edition, you'll find… .

Backwards compatibility, as the Revised Edition is built to work cleanly with existing Stars Without Number supplements and materials. The new systems slot in smoothly, and you can take or leave them individually as your group prefers.

Expanded character creation, with PCs now customized by special talents and character foci, new options for psychic characters, and new ways to make your hero mechanically distinct. Yet the process is still smooth and quick, with a special quick generator spread to create a hero from nothing more than a half-dozen die rolls.

Refined psionics, with more options to distinguish your psychic hero's powers and more flexible choices for their abilities. Tailor your psychic to your concept, whether as a cynical gunslinging brainguard or an ascetic psychic healer from a world of austere psionic scholars.

Improved starship combat, with decisive roles for every member of the party. Build your own starships with the included system and employ new hardware and new starship mods to make your ungainly crate the fastest contraband runner this side of the Veil Nebula.

New systems to support additional types of play, including rules for hacking, remote drones, and expert technical modification of gear and starships.

Upgraded tools for sandbox sector creation, with forty new world tags to help define a GM's stellar creations, guides for adding additional system points of interest, and material to help a GM define the interesting traits of the worlds they create. These tools aren't just a clump of random tables, they're a framework to boost your own creativity and help you make fast, good, playable material for your game.

Augmented adventure creation guidelines. Aside from a hundred piping-hot adventure seeds that mesh smoothly with the world creation tools, Stars Without Number: Revised Edition also includes content to help you turn your vague ideas into a playable evening's adventure. Guidelines on challenges, rewards, and complications in play are all aimed toward the working GM, the man or woman who's not just theorizing their adventures, but actually responsible for making something fun for the whole group.

Tools for creating aliens, Virtual Intelligences, and hostile human foes, with guidelines for handling potentially-hostile encounters and creating the kind of fearsome xenobeasts that can challenge the doughtiest explorer. Or perhaps you want to be an alien or robot? You'll find the tools for that in Stars Without Number: Revised Edition.

Faction rules, for handling the background warring and intrigues of hostile groups. Need to add life and motion to your stellar sectors? Sprinkle in a few factions to make news for the PCs to respond to, or use these rules to handle the colonies, spy agencies, mercenary companies, or other enterprises your heroes establish.

And these things? They're all in this free version. Yes, just like the original edition, Stars Without Number: Revised Edition has a free PDF edition to share with your friends and pass around to interested parties. Those daring stellar freebooters who want more can grab the deluxe version right here, gaining....

Transhuman tech, with rules for bodyswapping, digital identities, post-scarcity economics, and just as importantly, GM guidelines on making exciting adventures when all the old pillars of familiarity have fallen away.

True AIs, the vast and terrible intellects that can bring forth wonders and ruin in equal measure. Playing a synthetic VI or aspiring organic godmind? Learn how your PC can accumulate the tech they need to ascend to this new plane of being.

Mechs, for those GMs who relish the thunder of steel titans on their far-future battlefields.

Heroic PCs, for groups that want to trade the gritty, lethal tone of a standard campaign for classic space opera, with larger-than-life heroes and superhuman skills.

Society creation, customizing a world or a hab with its own culture and history, pre-designed with fault lines and conflicts to engage your heroes. You'll get more than a dry recounting of details; you'll get the information you need to build adventures that fit with this world's smouldering tensions.

So far this RPG looks amazing but there are a few odd things that seemed off to me. Partial Warriors are stuck at half level for attack bonus and only get +2 by lvl 5. What if a campaign actually does go to higher levels than 10 and such? Eventually Warriors outclass any partial warrior by a long shot. At lvl 15 for instance the warrior is getting +15 and the partial is getting +9. Seems the only time being a adventurer is more advantageous is when u only like 1 particular physic skill on a character or you just want higher health on a expert and intend to have high enough skills to not need a reroll.

My main suggestion would be to make the +1 to attack for a partial warrior be level 1 and every 4 levels after. Atleast that way it has some proper scaling. If its too strong then change the HP per level to +1 instead of 2 per level.

At the end of the day, with the changes above, the expert seems to be the only one getting somewhat of a raw deal when compared to their partial counterpart....See more A warrior has more attack and the special hit/negate power, the psychic has a much wider range of psychic abilities and more to start, but the expert only ever gets a reroll option which has the same frequency of use as the warrior who also gets the passive better attack bonus and health as well as the guaranteed nature of their ability. I'd make the expert ability twice per scene or give them an additional ability that allows them to do 1 skill check or non combat action per scene as a instant action which would normally require a main action. That way they can do more skills or support actions in stressful situations.

Just my 2 cents. Wondering if anyone else agrees.

EDIT: Also, in the Partial Warrior section it clarifies how the +2 hp per level is calculated past level 1 but it does not in the Warrior section.

Robin DApril 09, 2018 5:06 pm UTC

PURCHASER

At the moment i am mastering one group with this system and it is a lot of fun. However a second group might be forming in the future. The folks in question are not as comfortable with reading english as me, though. Could i get already translated material somewhere (german)?

Pierre SMarch 29, 2018 9:27 pm UTC

Something is wrong with the "Full-size Preview". It consists only of the 2nd page of the character-sheet, nothing very informative about the "look" of the game.

no, its been changed, now you have to roll higher than AC, typical D&D style, kinda confused why he takes issue with the system, you can easily roll it back to the previous system, unless he takes issue with any system where you have to roll to hit?

Brandon MJune 09, 2018 5:43 pm UTC

PURCHASER

This is my only hick with this game. Wish was roll to hit and then armor penetration. Or, just add an armor penetration mechanic. I thought about trying to come up with one for this game. Anyone already have one made?

Trevor SJune 09, 2018 5:56 pm UTC

PURCHASER

For my group we decided to incorporate different ammo types that can grant bonuses such as armour penetration.

Giulio TJune 23, 2018 3:03 pm UTC

PURCHASER

I'm bored of armor that makes you difficult to hit.
It always scales badly, and light armors ends up to be not even cosmetic.
I was thinking of using Tech Level for armors (not shields) as Damage reduction.

Any chance of a Print on Demand option for this? My players want copies but don't need the Full version.

Kevin CJanuary 27, 2018 5:00 pm UTC

PUBLISHER

The only print edition will be the full one, alas- there's no real price savings in just printing a 261 page book versus a 324 page book. As a standard-color hardcover, the latter would currently be $2.23 more expensive than the former, and that's just not worth it when it includes the inevitable confusion that would follow from customers not being sure if the print version they're getting is the full game or not.

Trevor SJanuary 27, 2018 5:42 pm UTC

PURCHASER

Yeah, for full colour that makes sense. I was just hoping for a black & white version that I could have printed and mailed instead of taking it to a local print shop and post office. Thanks though!

The revised edition streamlines skills and adds new features such as drones and the new adventurer class. The Sector generator is always a help, allowing GM's to easily create unique settings. Psionics have changed substantially, now having core techni [...]

Kevin Crawford has once more shown his shear genius and understanding of OSR rule systems. The original Stars without Number was an excellent rule system with some clunky features and a few overly complex ones. This new edition streamlines char [...]

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